Wretched Earth

Summary

INTEGRITY LOSTAfter the Megacull, the weak died off, so that a century later, the living have descended from only the toughest stock. Still, it takes more than strength to survive Deathlands. It takes skill, cunning and a warrior's heart. But for Ryan Cawdor, staying alive isn't just about living. In this nuke-transformed America, it helps if somewhere, deep inside, there's hope of finding something better.

WALKING DEAD

A virulent strain of a predark biowep has been unleashed upon the denizens of northern Kansas, turning them into rotting, flesh-eating monsters. Running from the mindless, soulless rottie hordes, Ryan and his companions arrive in the civil-war-torn ville of Sweetwater Junction. They've got one shot at beating the hungry rotties: turn the bloodlust of the ville's warring factions away from each other and toward a common enemy. But that means splitting up and hiring on as sec for both sides and surviving the firefightbefore the real hell is unleashed.

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Wretched Earth - James Axler

Epilogue

Prologue

The four of them stood in the darkened vanadium-steel room in the guts of the shattered redoubt: a tall rangy man in a tattered greatcoat; a well-built woman whose hair showed auburn highlights in the backsplash from their lamps off gleaming metal walls; a youth with a mane of long black hair hanging past his shoulders; another youth only a bit older, wearing a patched bomber jacket and glasses.

The woman played the bluish gleam of her solar-charging flash on the walls of what he took to be a hexagonal chamber. To the kid with glasses the walls looked like glass. What feeble illumination the quartet was able to muster wasn’t enough to let his weak eyes see anything beyond the glass.

Shit, the tall man said. Nothing in this place. No food, no ammo, no meds. It’s been looted out. I feel like smashing those fancy windows.

What good’ll that do? the woman asked.

The tall man shrugged. Make me feel better.

You can’t, the youth said.

The others looked at him, their eyes glinting faintly. He quailed a little under the pressure of their gaze. His own light, a dingy yellow at best, faded to thirsty-man-piss color as he momentarily forgot to keep pumping the little flywheel generator with the palm of his hand, which ached from the constant squeezing.

The tall man raised a fist as if to backhand him.

Step back, Drygulch. He may know something, the woman said.

Yeah, the tall man said, sneering. He knows a lot of crap. It’s all he’s good for.

The youth in the glasses actually rallied at that. He did know stuff. He was endlessly curious, always seeking to learn more. And he had a memory like a miser’s fist.

Let him talk, the woman said. She wore a homemade leather jacket, the collar of which was lined with silver wolf hide. A belt held up her khaki trousers and the flapped holster for her remade .45 handblaster. "He does know stuff."

"It’s Reno," he insisted. He didn’t even know how the older man had gotten hold of his hated childhood nickname.

Whatever, Drygulch said. He wasn’t a bad type. He didn’t dislike Reno so much as he liked poking at him.

Reno swelled inside with the warmth that came from Lariat’s acknowledgment of his value to them. To her. He held on desperately to the hope that someday the auburn-haired adventuress would realize his real worth, and return the fiercely burning love he harbored for her.

That’s some kind of armored glass, he said. Your wrecking bar’d just bounce off. So would bullets, so forget all about shooting at the walls.

Drygulch’s badlands face crumpled even more than it had to start with. But he lowered the revolver in his right hand. His left held up a kerosene lantern whose smoke filled the room with an oily smell.

This is a triple-bust, the tall man growled. We’re wastin’ our time.

No, my friends, said the young man who was the party’s fourth member. He wore a long, plaid flannel shirt over holey jeans. The soles of his ancient, pointy-toed cowboy boots were held on by thin pieces of leather, sewed around when wet and allowed to tighten into place as they dried. He carried a well-worn M-1 carbine. There is treasure down here, I tell you. I have seen it with my own eyes.

Then why didn’t you lead us right to it without dicking around? Drygulch asked.

The black-haired kid’s name was Johnny Hueco. He wasn’t one of them. He was a local who’d fast-talked the trio into hiring him to guide them into the busted-open redoubt, where he claimed he knew where to lay hands on a baron’s ransom in prime scavvie.

Because we wanted to make sure nothing was going to jump on our backs when we walked all fat, dumb and happy past doors without checking what was behind ’em, Lariat said. Also because we wanted to make sure we didn’t miss anything worth hauling out of here. So step back off the trigger, Drygulch.

We got to hurry, Johnny Hueco said, shifting his weight uneasily from foot to foot. Things come out at night. Or in.

That was why the bunch he’d been with when they’d stumbled onto this place, in what once was western Kansas and was now triple hard core Deathlands, hadn’t stripped the redoubt of its fabulous treasure. So he said. Something had jumped them in the dark. Only Johnny got out alive, and only because he was closest to the door.

And because whatever it was had been too busy eating his friends, his new companions reckoned. Not that they held it against him. Loyalty was as good as jack or ammo in the Deathlands. Because it was so rare.

When muties or monsters attacked, sometimes all you could do was bug out, and stickies take the slow. Like jack or ammo or white lightning, loyalty could run out.

Lead on, then, Lariat said.

Johnny led them back out into the broad main corridor. Their footsteps chased each other up and down the bare metal walls like small frightened creatures.

Shouldn’t there be some kind of padding on the floors? Reno asked. Their boot soles crunched on drifted dirt leavened with some kind of coarse material that didn’t seem quite like rock.

Rats ate it, Johnny said. Hate rats.

I dunno, Drygulch said. Roast ’em just right, they can be mighty tasty. If they ain’t been eatin’ too much fresh shit or old chills.

Reno licked his lips, suddenly remembering how ravenous he was. He hadn’t eaten since they broke camp in the watery, greenish-orange light of dawn.

It wasn’t just his wits and his packrat memory that had sustained him through a brutal childhood. There were the rats, too. Where people were, rats thrived. To the perpetually starving Hamster, the ones that had been feasting off shit and dead people tasted just fine.

Here, what’s this? Lariat said. She strode up beside Johnny.

They stopped. Lariat shone her flashlight at the wall, where a large white sign with red lettering had been bolted: Danger—Restricted Area—Authorized Laboratory Personnel Only.

Drygulch read the sign slowly. Okay, what’s that mean?

It means we’re not supposed to be here, Johnny said.

"I know that, ass face. I’m not stupe. I mean, what’s it mean here?"

It means there’s valuable stuff inside, Lariat said.

What if there’s something living in there? Reno asked, hustling to catch up. He didn’t think his friends would cut him out on any ace scavvie they found. He just didn’t like to leave too much to chance.

It was cold in here—as above, so below. Topside, the plains were dusted with light dry snow that eddied in the wind. Despite that, Reno’s skin prickled as if sunburned.

He hoped it wasn’t caused by rads from fallout from the old ground-burst crater a few miles west, drifting in through the cracks in the installation’s immensely thick concrete containment shell. They had no way of telling. Unless your skin started getting all mottled and your hair began falling out in clumps. Or you just went straight to the convulsions-and-bloody-shits stage.

With the first you might not die. With the second, you might not die soon enough. He’d seen both.

Drygulch held up his kerosene lantern. Next to the sign was a door that had been jammed partway open.

Strike, Lariat said. She poked her head through and shone her own flashlight around. Looks like some kind of lab, all right.

I don’t know, Drygulch said. I don’t feel triple-good fucking with whitecoat stuff. Especially not from old days.

You think we’re in here scuffling like rats for rations and ammo? the woman scoffed.

Well, yeah. That and meds. Mebbe some blasters. Boots. I could use me some new boots.

Small-time. Mebbe you’re satisfied with that. Not me.

Reno caught up. I don’t think we’ll find much of that kinda stuff, anyway, he said. Place has seemed picked pretty clean so far.

But Johnny Hueco was dancing from one disintegrating boot to another. This is it! he said. It’s what I told you about.

No shit? Drygulch said dubiously.

Doesn’t look touched in here, Lariat said, backing out.

If there really was anything worthwhile in there, wouldn’t somebody have gotten to it by now? Drygulch asked.

Mebbe not, Reno said. Mebbe the door hasn’t been open long.

Why’d it be open now, Reno? Lariat asked.

Earthquakes, he said. Get a lot of seismic activity in this area. Some big quakes. Mighta shaken it open.

Lariat studied him a moment longer. Her auburn hair hung to just above the wolf-fur-trimmed collar of her jacket, framing wide cheekbones and dark eyes with a touch of the Orient to them. Mebbe she wasn’t a beauty, Reno thought. Most men found her good-looking. She was queen of Reno’s world.

She’d made it clear early and emphatically that she was too good for the likes of Drygulch and Reno. They might be trail mates and partners, but no touchy-feely stuff.

Lariat nodded now. Could be it. I’m going in. Who’s with me?

Might be bad animals in there, Lariat, Drygulch said. Muties even.

She drew her .45 handblaster, pinching back the slide to confirm she had a round chambered.

So, might be animals, she said. Right. I’m ready. Who wants to live forever?

Um, just a sec, Reno said. The others turned, then followed his flywheel flashlight beam upward. The ceiling, higher in here than in the corridor, had buckled sharply downward. So, if the concrete’s seriously cracked, the whole fucking thing might cave in on our heads at any minute.

It hasn’t fallen yet, Lariat said blithely, and went in.

Eager as a hound pup, Johnny followed her. Drygulch sent an eye roll Reno’s way before he went on through.

Reno carried a Winchester Model 1897 12-gauge scattergun on a rope sling over his shoulder. A pump model with a hammer and a 5-round tube magazine, it had been old, Reno had read somewhere in an old scavvied magazine, even before the Big Nuke lit the skies with hell’s own light. At some point in the weapon’s long history the barrel had been sawed off a few inches past the end of the mag.

Transferring the flywheel flashlight from his right hand, which had seriously begun to cramp, Reno took the best hold he could on the shotgun’s grip and swung the barrel up. What possible good the weapon could do against a potential cave-in, the young man had no clue. He only knew holding it made him feel better.

Okay, what’s ‘prions’ mean? Drygulch was asking suspiciously when Reno entered the lab. He was peering at a cabinet stenciled prominently with that word, plus numerous danger symbols and scary messages. I never heard of prions.

There was a smell in there Reno couldn’t name. More than just cold metal and dust. Not like anything that had crept inside recently and died. And he knew that if anybody had died down here during the Big Nuke, in the hundred years and more that had passed, they’d have got their stinking done long since. But still, something made him think of death.

Then again, he reminded himself, that’s an occupational hazard for a scavvie. They were basically all about stealing dead people’s stuff, and trying not to join them in the process.

Hamster, Drygulch said, you’re the one with your rat nose always buried in a book. What’s it mean?

Reno frowned and scratched his brow. Questions he couldn’t answer tickled. No idea, he said.

Call him Reno, said Lariat, who didn’t look up from flicking through random debris on a countertop with hands encased in fingerless leather gloves. Anyway, it means ‘the goods.’ Means we struck black gold.

You know this how? Drygulch asked.

Whatever prions are, the woman said with an air of tested patience, "the whitecoats back before Fire Day thought they were worth squirreling away under that million tons of concrete and steel that’s got Reno’s panties in a bunch. And a sealed heavy door inside of that. I’d say that’s valuable whatever the fuck it is, wouldn’t you?"

Cabinet’s locked, Drygulch complained.

Well, open it, Lariat said. Use your pry bar. Reno, guard the door.

Johnny prowled the room. Lariat stood watching as Drygulch drew the four-foot pry bar from its scabbard fastened to his big rucksack. They all carried empty packs. Their possessions were cached a half mile from the installation’s entrance.

The metal cabinet marked Prions wasn’t all that sturdy. A little poking for purchase, a grunt and heave and a squeal of tormented metal, and the door popped open.

Drygulch resheathed the bar, picked up his lantern and hunkered down to peer inside.

Little vials in here, he said.

Load ’em in your pack, Lariat said.

Their guide walked to a door at the back of the room. It looked as if it opened by sliding sideways into the alloy wall.

There’s more through here, he said.

Can we open it? Reno asked dubiously. Looks a little hefty for Drygulch’s bar.

It was open when I was here before, Johnny said. I swear it.

As if to prove his point, he began to pull on it, as if hoping to open it using nothing more than the friction of his fingertips.

Amazingly, it worked. The door slid open with only a token squeal of protest.

Watch it— Reno began.

He had no idea what made him voice the aborted warning. Before it finished leaving his mouth a dark shape shot from the blackness beyond the door and hit the kneeling Drygulch as he shouldered his pack. The tall man went over with a crunch that horrified Reno, until he realized it was likely some of the small, seemingly sturdy vials Drygulch had just stuffed in his pack breaking, not his bones.

Then Reno had something to be really horrified about, as he swung his flashlight on target. Its feeble shine revealed what looked to be a spiky-furred gray rat the size of a large dog, but with a snoutful of sharp teeth instead of incisors. And an extra set of appendages like a mantis’s clawed forelimbs jutting from just behind its shoulders, three feet long and covered in gleaming black chitin.

Drygulch had somehow got a hand under the mutie’s lower jaw and was fending off its fangs. For the moment. Reno stepped up so his shotgun’s muzzle was about six inches from where thick neck met misshapen torso, and fired.

The noise was like two cast-iron pans being clapped together either side of his head. Muzzle-flame splashed against the creature’s body. The sickening reek of burned hair went right up Reno’s nostrils like barbs. The charge of scavenged number 4 buck tore the fanged head halfway from the body.

Reno kicked it aside, where it lay with its legs twitching, jaws still snapping, and those awful insectile claws scratching futilely at a synthetic-tiled floor.

Another figure darted from the door. Lariat’s .45 bucked and roared and vomited yellow flame three times, fast. The horror squealed and tumbled into a forward roll that carried it into the far wall.

Johnny stood with his back to the doorway. His lean, handsome face stretched to accommodate a mouth that had become a yawning oval of fear. He held his little carbine halfway to his shoulder as if to shoot at the second creature that had come through.

Then his expression grew strangely curious. Reno heard a sound like somebody stepping on a ripe gourd.

A claw like the first mutie’s suddenly burst through Johnny’s chest. Blood fountained out around it, but didn’t hide the fact that it was way bigger than the one the other rat thing sported. The clawed arm lifted Johnny off the floor. He screamed and flailed his limbs mindlessly. The M-1 carbine cracked with deafening shots, sending ricochets howling around the adventurers.

Time to go! Lariat yelled, as a tumbling round glanced off Reno’s shoulder.

Drygulch jumped up and ran. Lariat raced after him, firing her handblaster back into the infinite blackness of the inner doorway. Backpedaling into the corridor, Reno started to warn his boss that she might hit their guide.

Then he asked himself why that would be a bad thing.

* * *

LET ME LOOK AT IT, Reno said.

Drygulch held his wounded arm away. No. It’s fine. Leave me ’lone.

The last of their jackrabbit stew boiled in a cast-iron kettle on a little break-down aluminum tripod over a campfire of driftwood and dried weeds. Some flakes of what Lariat claimed was sage bubbled in the mix.

The stew smelled to Reno like stinkbug ass. He guessed it would taste worse. But after this day a good case of the running shits would only be appropriate. Anyway, he was hungry enough to eat a stinkbug’s ass. A whole pot of stinkbug asses.

But by the sick yellow light of the flames, he made out something disturbing. Reddish inflammation, shot through with nasty dark discoloration, crept up the man’s lanky arm from his bandaged hand.

Lariat pronounced the stew done. Drygulch refused any, which right there showed he was in bad shape. Reno ate his share with relish. It was definitely better than stinkbug ass. If not much else.

When nothing remained that his spoon could catch, Reno licked his bowl. Then he scrubbed it with dirt and a handful of crackly, dry bunchgrass. As he stuffed his hobo tool and bowl in his pack, Lariat motioned him aside.

The night sky was full of stars. An orange moon hung near the western horizon. Wind quested restlessly through sere grass. Most of the light snow that had fallen earlier had melted away.

So what do you think he’s got? she asked.

Reno shrugged. Dunno. Won’t let me look at it.

I can hear you, Drygulch said. Got no call talking about me in the third person like I was a…a rock or somethin’. Insultin’.

Well, if some damn fool hadn’t gone and stuck his hand in his pack and gotten cut to shit on broken glass, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, Lariat said.

I was tryin’ to find out if them prion vials was okay after I landed on ’em!

And found out the hard way you’d busted most of them.

We got a few intact, Lariat, Reno said. He hated disputes. He knew how quickly nasty could erupt. When that happened it was usually him who wound up getting the bad end of the ass-wiping stick. Oughta be able to get something for them, if we find the right whitecoats.

I can do that, she said. Then, taking Reno by the arm, she urged him a little farther outside the circle of faint firelight. And more important, out of the aggrieved Drygulch’s earshot.

Could it mebbe be gangrene? she asked.

Too soon, Reno said. Could be blood poisoning, though.

He glanced uneasily back at the tall man, who had slithered into his bedroll and deliberately lain down with his back to his comrades as well as the fire.

I wonder if those prions have anything to do with his condition, Reno said softly.

Doesn’t much matter if the stupe won’t let us look at it, Lariat said in a tone that suggested it didn’t much matter to her if he did. He doesn’t wake up in the morning, we’ll know something was wrong.

* * *

COMMOTION ROUSED RENO from a wondrous dream of soft sheets and blow jobs.

He sat up. By the vagrant red gleam of the low coals they’d kicked the fire into before bedding down, he saw Drygulch thrashing in his sleeping bag. He moaned like an animal in distress.

Drygulch? Reno asked tentatively.

Lariat appeared out of the darkness. She’d been on sentry duty. Johnny Hueco’s M-1 carbine was tipped back over her shoulder.

Drygulch? she said.

He uttered a strangled noise somewhere between a cough and a scream, then spasmed so hard his back arched clear off the ground. His fingers raked frozen soil, then he fell back silent and still.

After he stayed that way for a full minute, Lariat said, That can’t be good.

Reno skinned out of his sleeping bag and started pulling on jeans encrusted with dirt.

Lariat, be careful, he said.

Why? she asked. Poor slagger’s chilled.

She prodded Drygulch with the toe of a boot.

With an inhuman snarl he sat up. His face was a strange gray in the ember light, cheeks sunken, the lips drawn back from his teeth. A network of dark lines spread across his face as if his veins were right beneath the skin and filled with ink. His eyes burned like coals in black-painted cups.

Lariat jumped back in alarm. Drygulch? she whispered.

He thrashed, as if the bedroll were a mutie monster whose clutches he was trying to escape.

Get back! Reno shouted. Get away from him! He isn’t right!

Drygulch, you’re scaring me—

Bursting free at last from the sleeping bag, Drygulch uttered an eerie moan and pounced on Lariat like an angry mountain lion.

Chapter One

Gig sucks, Jak Lauren complained.

The crowded barroom of Omar’s Triple-Fine Caravanserai and Gaudy reeked of spilled beer, spilled sweat and the faint tang of spilled blood.

At least, Ryan Cawdor thought, leaning on the hardwood bar with a protective hand on the handle of a mug of beer, I can’t smell puke. Much.

Reluctant as I am to condone, and thereby encourage, what may be a new nadir of our young associate’s articulation, I fear I most heartily concur with the sentiment, Dr. Theophilus Tanner said. He had to shout to make himself heard over the din of drunken conversation, riotous laughter and tinkling of a gap-toothed and out-of-tune upright piano.

The piano, inexplicably painted canary-yellow, was played by a girl of about twelve with freckles, pigtails, a homespun dress and at least a little skill. Those who thought her musical talents deficient were well-advised to keep their opinions behind their teeth, if they liked having teeth. The girl, Sary-Anne, was one of the innumerable children claimed by the tavern keeper and his three wives.

Omar kept a hickory cudgel in a leather holster down his leg to bust the heads of the obstreperous, not to mention the teeth of the hypercritical. A similar holster down the other leg carried a sawed-off, double-barrel scattergun for the especially hard to convince.

As gaunt as a crane, Doc Tanner perched next to Ryan on a bar stool of stout raw planks hammered together, with some sawdust-filled burlap for a cushion. The tails of his frock coat hung down almost to the loose sawdust that covered the warped wooden floor.

He raised a tumbler of what the bartender sold as whiskey, and which Ryan was sure was just shine colored brown with he-didn’t-want-to-know-what. For a moment Doc studied its contents, which would probably have still been murky had the glass been clean and the light better than the glow of a few kerosene lanterns strung strategically around the crowded barroom. Strategically so that none of the patrons could get too good a look at the goods on tap. Then, with a convulsive heave, the ancient-looking man grabbed the heavy glass in both hands and tossed the shot down his throat. Immediately, his body quivered.

Mother’s milk, Doc said. His long, silver-white hair seemed to have gotten wilder. His seamed face hitched into a sad smile, and his blue eyes took on a faraway look.

You know it’s not like we had a choice, their shorter companion said. The man in the leather jacket and battered fedora adjusted the glasses on the bridge of his nose. Our point of arrival was picked clean, and we all got a nasty addiction to eating, which we have to tend to.

Point of arrival was J. B. Dix’s way of saying redoubt when unfriendly ears might be listening to their conversation. Located in redoubts, deep beneath the earth, was a network of functioning six-sided matter-transfer units with armaglass walls color-coded for identification. These mat-trans units gave potential access to sites dotted not just all over North America, but the rest of the world, as well.

Can hunt, Jak said, tossing down his beer. He was a teenager with a mane of long hair as white as snow. The color of his skin matched his hair. He was an albino, and still cranky over the dispute that had met his initial attempt to enter the caravanserai.

The sign over the round arch over the gate through the high mud-brick wall that surrounded the compound read No Muties. Fortunately, Omar himself, eventually summoned by one of his sons, understood that albinism wasn’t a mutie trait, and allowed Jak to enter.

Their employer, Boss Tim Plunkett, had complained loudly at the delay the whole while. There were reasons why Jak said the gig sucked.

That’s your answer to everything, Jak, J.B. said, taking off his glasses and wiping them clear of condensation with a shirttail. "We can hunt, yeah. If you don’t mind living on about